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Posted August 13, 2014 09:24 pm

Associated Press

Military base shelters for young immigrants close

PORT HUENEME, Calif. — Officials have closed the three shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children that were set up on military bases to cope with a surge of Central Americans illegally crossing the border.

Krista Piferrer, whose nonprofit group ran the shelter at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, says children were discharged on Saturday and the shelter closed earlier this week.

The spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, Kenneth Wolfe, says the shelter at Fort Sill in southwest Oklahoma closed last Wednesday.

Wolfe tells the Ventura County Star that the shelter at Naval Base Ventura County shut down last Thursday.

About 7,700 children were housed at the shelters. Wolfe previously said that the shelters could be reopened if border crossings spike again.